Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature: Worldly Teaching

245 Pages·2013·1.543 MB·English

by  Masood Ashraf Raja, Hillary Stringer, Zach VandeZande

Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature
New Frontiers in Education, Culture, and Politics
Edited by Kenneth J. Saltman
New Frontiers focuses on both topical educational issues and highly original works
of educational policy and theory that are critical, publicly engaged, and interdis-
ciplinary, drawing on contemporary philosophy and social theory. The books in
the series aim to push the bounds of academic and public educational discourse
while remaining largely accessible to an educated reading public. New Frontiers
aims to contribute to thinking beyond the increasingly unified view of public
education for narrow economic ends (economic mobility for the individual and
global economic competition for the society) and in terms of efficacious delivery
of education as akin to a consumable commodity. Books in the series provide
both innovative and original criticism and offer visions for imagining educa-
tional theory, policy, and practice for radically different, egalitarian, and just
social transformation.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan:
Education in the Age of Biocapitalism: Optimizing Educational Life
for a Flat World
By Clayton Pierce
Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Urban Education and the Struggle
for Democratic Life
By Alexander J. Means
Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature: Worldly Teaching
Edited by Masood Ashraf Raja, Hillary Stringer, and Zach VandeZande
Critical Pedagogy and
Global Literature
Worldly Teaching
Edited by
Masood Ashraf Raja ,
Hillary Stringer, and
Zach VandeZande
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND GLOBAL LITERATURE
Copyright © Masood Ashraf Raja, Hillary Stringer, and
Zach VandeZande, 2013.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–31975–3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Critical pedagogy and global literature : worldly teaching / edited by
Masood Ashraf Raja, Hillary Stringer, and Zach VandeZande.
pages cm—(New frontiers in education, culture, and politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–31975–3 (alk. paper)
1. Literature—Study and teaching. 2. Critical pedagogy. 3. Literature
and society. I. Raja, Masood A., 1965–
PN61.C75 2013
807—dc23 2013006084
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: August 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The editors would like to thank their contributors, their families,
and their colleagues at the University of North Texas.
Without their support, this book would not have been possible.
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Contents
Introduction 1
Masood Ashraf Raja
Part I Theory
1 Gender, Knowledge, and Economy: Greg Mortenson,
Turning Schools into Stones 9
Robin Truth Goodman
2 Educating for Cosmopolitanism: Lessons from
Cognitive Science 25
Mark Bracher
3 Learning to Be a Psychopath: Th e Pedagogy of
the Corporation 47
Kenneth J. Saltman
4 Corporate World Literature: Neoliberalism and
the Fate of the Humanities 63
Jeff rey R. Di Leo
5 Reading the “Other” in World Literature: Toward a
Discourse of Unfamiliarity 75
Swaralipi Nandi
6 Pedagogy for Healing and Justice through
Cambodian American Literature 97
Jonathan H. X. Lee and Mary Th i Pham
7 A Moving Pedagogy: Teaching Global Literature
through Translation 113
Kyle Wanberg
8 “Re-worlding” in Tsitsi Dangaremba’s Nervous Conditions 131
Linda Daley
viii CONTENTS
9 Teaching World Systems: How Critical Pedagogy Can
Frame the Global 149
David B. Downing
10 Object Lessons: Material Culture Approaches to
Teaching Global Poetry 165
Hella Rose Bloom
Part II Praxis
11 A Gun and a Book: Teaching Naguib Mahfouz’s
Th e Th ief and the Dogs in a Time of
Revolution and Occupation 181
Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
12 Magical Realism: A Gateway out of America and
into the World 189
Tessa Mellas
13 Making the Familiar Unfamiliar: Teaching Origin Myths,
Material Conditions, and “the Bible as Literature” 193
Hillary Stringer
14 Cycles of Opportunity: On the Value and Effi cacy of
Native American Literature in Teaching World
Literature to Millennials 201
Marnie M. Sullivan
15 “Th e Speculation of Schoolboys”: Confronting the
Academy in U lysses 213
Matthew McKenzie Davis
16 Reaching for the Other in Teaching
Aleksandar Hemon’s “A Coin” 221
Zach VandeZande
Aft erword 227
Masood Ashraf Raja, Hillary Stringer, and Zach VandeZande
List of Contributors 2 29
Index 231
Introduction
Masood Ashraf Raja
The world as it was, is, or will be, is beyond common sense, beyond natu-
ral understanding: it must be taught. Didactics is not only a fancy term
for teaching but is also a loaded concept, which, under certain enabling
conditions, is meant to teach us the very nature of what is given to us and
then perform an enabling act of transcendence from the given. The world
that we live in, this world in which neoliberal capital offers itself as natural
and non-referential, is also a world of unrelenting greed and heart-breaking
inequalities. How must we change this world? The answer: we must teach
the world as it is but also as it ought to be. We live in the belly of this mon-
ster called neoliberal capital that Ngugi, in another age it seems, had called
a two-mouthed demon that steals “food from people’s stores at midnight”
and then visits the robbed in “robes of charity” to offer them “a calabash
filled with the grain” (13) that was stolen at night. We are all complicit in
its design, instruments of its logic. Yes, sadly, there is no outside to capital:
we must, therefore, teach it from within and also learn, share, and teach the
strategies of its ultimate undoing. For, let us not forget, every system has its
own undoing woven into the very fabric of its being: the system needs this
death message to remain constantly on the move, in flux. The system, thus,
always has a secret at its core: true revolutionary pedagogy must seek, share,
and teach this secret.
In its earlier stages, the demon of capital effaced difference to make
everything in its own image and to arrogate all of world’s resources to
itself. Neoliberal capital, however, is a multiheaded demon and appropri-
ates difference in the name of development to continue the northward
flow of world’s resources for the use and pleasure of the so-called “mas-
ters of the universe.”
World literature, in all its connotations and denotations, is yet another
tool in the hands of capital: to teach the world so that the new generations
of northern elite can learn to negotiate the world in order to extract the
maximum advantage. Knowledge for the sake of profit and appropriative